Ever wonder why it can be more pleasant to think or study around other people? At a coffee shop, for instance?

It turns out that a moderate level of background noise enhances creativity better than a quiet room, says Juliet Zhu, an associate professor at the University of B.C.’s Sauder School of Business.

Zhu is co-chair of the 43rd annual Association for Consumer Research conference, billed as the largest consumer behaviour conference in the world.

More than 1,000 university professors and market researchers from around the world are converging on Vancouver today to attend this year’s event, which features more than 500 presentations at 15 concurrent sessions over four days and is open to the public at the Sheraton Wall Centre.

Background noise such as that found at a coffee shop (70 decibels) distracts people from “focusing too much on focal issues,” Zhu said. This enhances the ability to think creativity, she said, whereas if it’s quiet, it’s harder to think outside the box.

Zhu’s students will be presenting this research at the conference. The material will be published in the Journal of Consumer Research in December.

Strangely enough, warm rooms also enhance performance, Zhu said.

While a cool room might be more comfortable, Zhu’s research shows that a room at 26 or 27 degrees Celsius forces the body to use more of its limited cognitive resources. Believe it or not, this is a good thing.

“When the temperature is warm, but not too hot, you are spending some of your limited cognitive resources to get used to the temperature,” Zhu said. “If the task is difficult, you won’t have the energy to process the information piece by piece and will end up using unconscious processing to tackle the problem.

“For complicated tasks like buying a house or finding a spouse, going with your gut leads to better decisions. Warm temperatures actually promote unconscious thinking and that’s why they are better for difficult tasks.”

The role of physical environment in influencing consumer decisions is an area of growing interest in consumer research, said Darren Dahl, the prolific senior associate dean of research at the Sauder School of Business, who has eight papers at the conference.

“If it’s really cold outside, you might subconsciously seek to watch a movie that night that’s more romantic. If you’re feeling unbalanced, you might buy a comfort food that makes you feel more stable. We don’t realize the physical surroundings we’re in or the state we’re in could have real implications on what we’re buying.

“There is more and more evidence that the atmosphere in your store matters,” Dahl said. “Even how you place the clothing racks can impact people.”

A new phenomenon researchers are studying is the effect of customer customization and crowd sourcing, Dahl said.

While consumers enjoy offering suggestions for new products when they do it in isolation, they don’t like getting feedback on those suggestions from others. If other people give them feedback online, they like the end product less, Dahl said. “Comments from others ended up stifling creativity.”

Dahl’s own research has found that while people with high self-esteem may appear kinder to those they envy, they are more likely to covertly sabotage them. For instance, the person with high self-esteem may tell a friend “I’m glad you won the backstage prize to Madonna,” but then won’t buy that friend drinks at the bar later that night, Dahl said. A person with low self-esteem, on the other hand, might be more reluctant to congratulate the prize winner, but won’t pursue a negative action later on.

He’s also found that consumers ascribe morality to others based on the food choices they make and evaluate each other on the basis of income. Wealthy people choosing organic food (versus conventional foods), are seen as significantly more moral than those with low incomes.

Conference papers will range from “The Nosy Decision Maker: How the Sense of Smell Influences Consumers’ Decisions,” to “At the Bottom of the Pyramid: How Consumers Cope with Low Status” and “Would Others Be Gaga for Lady Gaga? When Personal Experience and Perspective Lead to (Mis) Predictions of Others’ Preferences.”

Other topics and ideas researchers will be presenting:

How fashion blog readers internalize branded narratives in blogs.

Ukraine’s nation-branding campaign.

The hypothesis that people draw more happiness from experiential versus material purchases because these lead to more verbal sharing.

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Can’t think? Maybe it’s too quiet

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